The Carolina Hurricanes have always been able to hang their hat on their penalty kill.

Even when things maybe weren't going well on the other side of the special teams coin, the PK was the one thing that Carolina was always really good at and the facts back that up.

Since Rod Brind'Amour took over, the Hurricanes have finished top-5 in penalty kill percentage every year outside of his first season (the team had the 8th best kill that year).

In fact, in three of those years, they have had the league's best kill, including in each of the past two seasons.

This year though, that has not been the case.

Carolina currently has just the 15th ranked penalty kill at a 79.37% success rate.

A lot of that damage was done early in the year, when the Hurricanes dealt with a plethora of injury issues, including being without Jaccob Slavin for nearly the entire first half of the season, but even now with a mostly healthy group, the team is still struggling to consistently kill off penalties.

And it's not like the Canes are constantly in the box either, as the team has taken just the 20th most penalties amongst the entire league.

So what gives?

For the season, the Hurricanes are actually still one of the best teams in terms of limiting chances, with the second least amount of chances against per 60 and the fourth best expected goals against per 60 while on the penalty kill.

Those numbers are right in line with their historical metric from years past, however, they're right in the middle of the pack in terms of goals against and have actually surrendered the sixth highest rate of high-danger goals while on the kill this year.

Even if we zoom in on just this recent stretch since returning from the Olympic break, where the Canes are killing just 70% of their penalties and have surrendered power play goals in six of those 10 games, most of their chance suppression metrics are still right in line with where they've been all season.

Hurricanes coach Rod Brind'Amour admitted that the kill's struggles are a growing concern for the the team, but was adverse to get into the specifics. 

"Not going to tell you the reasoning, but it's obvious to us," Brind'Amour said. "We have to get better in certain areas."

At least the team is aware of what they need to improve.

But for those of us not in the know, how can we explain the discrepancy between the limited chances surrendered and the actual goals against? Well, a lot of it seems to trace back to the goaltending.

For the season, the Hurricanes have had the third worst save percentage while on the kill (0.819), with the fifth worst high-danger PK save percentage (0.747).

They're limiting chances and really not giving up a ton, but the difference is that the goalies have just not been able to come up with saves for the team.

And over the last 10 games, it's only gotten worse, as the team is rocking a 0.692 save percentage while on the kill, which is the worst in the league.

It's even worse too when it comes to facing high-danger chances.

Carolina is conceding high danger chances at a bit of a higher rate as of late, but the goaltenders have been basically out to lunch on those looks, with just a 0.333 save percentage when facing high-danger chances.

Obviously it's not only on the goaltending, I mean, just look at some of the goals the team gave up Tuesday in Columbus where guys where getting beat to pucks or losing battles in front.

I will also say that, overall, Carolina is giving up more chances directly in front of the net this year than they were last year.

There's obviously always going to be players that get loose due to the numbers game and with Carolina's aggressiveness, that has the potential to happen more often, but that's the one area they need to make sure they're defending better.

So again, it's not solely a goaltending problem.

But at the end of the day, the team needs much better performances across the board out of their netminders if they want to see better results overall, because those save percentages just aren't going to cut it.

"We just have to be better," Brind'Amour said. "We'll leave it at that."

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